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User blog:Ivo09/The official dota 2 blogs, now with formatting.
Since I missed out on a ton, I'm going to put all the dota news here that has been blogged and remove my other blog, these are in reverse-chronological order. The sleeping dragon wakes October 31, 2011 - Dota Team http://www.dota2.com/comics/are_we_heroes_yet/ We’ve just finished our first significant expansion of Dota 2 server capacity around the world, and that means it’s time to kick this thing up a notch. Starting this week, we’ll be handing out Dota 2 in increasing volumes. To celebrate, we’re releasing the first part of the official Dota 2 comic, Tales from the Secret Shop. Once you’ve read today’s part, make sure you fill out the in Steam to secure your place in the upcoming invitations (if you haven’t restarted your Steam client for a few days, you might need to do that before clicking that link). The extra data the survey provides will allow us to ensure we invite a wide spread of players and hardware. One thing everyone will tell you is that Dota is a game that’s more fun with friends. Because of that, we wanted to make sure everyone we invited could bring a couple of friends – so everyone who receives Dota 2 will be given two extra copies that they can hand out to whomever they’d like. You’ll find your extra copies in the Steam section of your Steam account’s item inventory, and you can use the Steam Trading feature to give them to your friends. Once you have Dota 2 installed, keep an eye on this blog. We update the game every Thursday with extra heroes, features, and bug fixes, and we’ll cover interesting elements of those updates right here. We’ll also be giving you some more insight into the development of Dota 2 over the coming months, as we roll through the rest of Dota’s many heroes. Heat wave coming! October 28, 2011 - Dota Team Today’s update adds Huskar, Batrider, and everyone’s favorite Twin-Headed Dragon, Jakiro. We’re continuing to experiment with community management features, so today we’re adding a commendation system, which allows you to commend players who made your game a happier experience, and report anyone being hostile. As always, we’ll be gathering a bunch of data on the usage of the feature to see how it’ll fit into our overall system. Also, since we’ve received a bunch of positive feedback about the Player Perspective view in spectator mode, we’ve been working on putting the finishing touches on it – in this update it now shows you the shop, so you can see exactly how the pros buy their items. As usual, there’s a variety of other gameplay additions and fixes, and some improvements to the practice bots. The folks over at joindota.com, in partnership with own3D, have announced an online tournament featuring 24 teams that will compete for $14,000 dollars. The tournament will start on November 7th, so head over to the-defense.com for coverage. Update notes are available here. Misery loves company October 20, 2011 - Dota Team Now that you’ve got some practice against Riki, you’re ready to carry a gem against Broodmother. Who better to carry it than Skeleton King? And if you have a King, you need to have a Queen. We’ve also added the ability to Pause the game. Each player can currently pause the game 3 times, and as always we’ll iterate over the ruleset as you guys test the feature and get us feedback. http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/posts/qopskbm.jpg With ESWC coming up on Sunday, we’ve kept most other changes in the game to a minimum. These new heroes will be enabled in Captains Mode after the tournament is over but are available for regular use in Matchmaking. You can root for your favorite team over at Gosugamers for a chance to win a beta key. Share on Facebook Reddit this I’ve been here the whole time October 14, 2011 - Dota Team Today’s update adds everyone’s favorite invisible hero, Riki. That sound you hear is everyone scrabbling to find the shop’s hotkey combo for buying Gems of True Sight. Among a host of other additions, the practice bots will also buy the courier now. http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/posts/riki.jpg Lately we’ve been enjoying Dota Cinema’s series of 2 minute hero introductions. Neat stuff if you haven’t had a chance to see all of Dota 2′s current heroes yet. If you’ve seen all those, and still want more, check out Taylor Caines, who’ll be livestreaming a full 24 hour straight play session of Dota 2 for charity. Share on Facebook Reddit this Steeled and tempered. October 11, 2011 - Dota Team Dota is a game where it sometimes look like it’s impossible for your team to turn the match around, but the large number of variables in the game can often lead to cases where a team in that position still manages to win. If you talk to anyone who’s played a fair chunk of Dota, you’ll find they still remember that recent game where they thought the game was over, but they turned it around and staged an epic win. One of the biggest challenges of improving Dota’s experience is that of trying to ensure that players don’t prematurely leave games, robbing team mates of a chance to have that comeback experience, and the enemy team of learning that they may have a fantastic early game strategy that falls apart in the late game. If a significant number of games end prematurely for any reason, we believe it’s fundamentally unfulfilling for everyone. There are many reasons why players leave or go AFK. Aside from the obvious ones, there are many rare cases: they may get an important phone call, they may be having configuration issues with their computer, their team mates might be saying horrible things to them, they may get up to open the door for the pizza guy and accidentally lock themselves out (yes, someone at Valve actually did this). Some of these reasons are fundamentally undetectable to the game. So, like all thorny design issues that can’t be play tested internally, this is something we’ll be working on for some time in public. We think it’s a key problem in Dota 1 for us to solve in Dota 2, and hence, it’s too important for us to just rush into. So far we have been focused on gathering data about what’s really going on. Now you’ll see us starting to venture into additions that actually perturb the system. As these come on board, we’ll be measuring each carefully to make sure it’s making the overall ecosystem better, not penalizing legitimate players or missing those who are out to hurt other player’s experiences. As a result, don’t be surprised if we measure something we’ve released and then choose to remove it after we have the data. It’ll be an ongoing process for us as Dota 2′s player base expands, but it’s one we’re not going to stop working on until you tell us we’re done. As always, feel free to send us your thoughts and feedback. Share on Facebook Reddit this Twice the blood shall I shed! October 6, 2011 - Dota Team First things first, today’s update introduces Bloodseeker and Kunkka. Have fun! http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/posts/kunkkabloodseeker.jpg This update also enables the practice bots. While they’re still a work in progress, they’re a great low-pressure tool for trying out new heroes and item builds. While practicing with them, note that you can ping the minimap to send commands to your allied bots – ping an enemy tower to tell them to push a lane, an enemy hero to ask for assistance in a gank, and so on. At the moment they only know how to play a subset of the current heroes, but they do know how to use all of Dota 2′s many items. They’ll also use text chat to indicate their plans, so you can join in. For example, they’ll: *Let you know when they’re coming to your lane for a gank. *Communicate when they’re fleeing or losing a fight. *Indicate their high priority targets in upcoming team fights. *Expose their thinking about whether they should push or defend their lanes. *Call for assistance versus Roshan if they think the timing is right. If you’re interested, here are a few features we’ll be adding to them next: *User specified difficulty levels, so you can tune them to your skill level. *Deeper control over your allied bots, so you can “command” your team at a high level. For instance, you might want your team’s carry to not join a fight, and instead keep farming their lane. Note that they do a good job of making these kinds of decisions themselves, but if you really want to be hands-on, you can. *Support for several more heroes. As always, let us know what you think. Finally, we saw that Playdota’s Photo Competition finished up, and handed out several Dota 2 keys. If you haven’t taken a look, there’s some great photos there. Share on Facebook Reddit this That’s worth a bottle of rum! October 5, 2011 - Dota Team http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/posts/kunkka_spyglass.jpg One thing we’ve received a lot of feedback on is the Dota 2 spectator system. We thought it might be interesting to talk a bit about the thinking that led us to the current system, in the hopes that it might help you understand what we’re trying to do, so that you can help us improve upon it. We think that spectating games, both live and saved replays, is an important part of the Dota experience. At a high level, we felt there were two important ways that players would be using our spectator system, beyond simply watching games for fun. The first way is that they’d be using it to watch in the interests of improving their skills. The second is that they’d be watching commentated matches in tournaments and leagues. Overall we felt that spectating should be treated as importantly as playing the game, so we started with a WATCH button featured prominently in Dota 2′s main menu. If you’re looking to watch games to improve yourself, there are a number of filters you can use to find a useful game, such as one with a particular hero or player, one featuring players of specific skill levels, and so on. This is an area we expect to improve upon in the future too: if you want to learn a new hero, we want to make it really easy to find a set of replays that’ll help you quickly get a handle on it. If you’re following a favorite competitive team, or missed a friend’s great match last night, the game will know and lead you to those replays. If you’re an experienced player who wants to expand your skill with a specific hero, or work on your teamwork as part of a specific team of heroes, we want you to be able to easily find replays that’ll let you see high level players using those heroes in matches. The second main feature we added for players who are watching to learn is the Player Perspective camera mode. In this mode, you select one of the players in the game, and you see the game as if you were at their computer. You see the player’s mouse cursor and input, their camera work, their HUD, their interaction with UI elements, and so on. We wanted you to be able to see exactly how a highly skilled player is playing the game, so you can see ways of improving your own play, and that’s what this camera mode lets you do. When you’re watching a tournament match, you’re usually watching it at the same time as a large number of other spectators. We wanted to improve the experience of watching live games, and the first problem we identified is that individual spectators don’t have a shared view of the game. This makes it harder to have a conversation with other spectators around what’s happening onscreen, because everyone will be watching from a different position. This problem led us to creating the Directed camera mode, where we were able to leverage our experience with Source TV to build a smart camera that knows what’s about to happen, and tries to make sure it’s in a good position to let you see that action unfold. So in addition to being able to kick back and relax knowing that the camera will always be where the action is, you’re also able to talk about anything happening onscreen because you know that everyone else watching the Directed camera is seeing the same thing you are. Another goal we had for spectating matches was to have better support for commentators. If you’ve watched any of the matches from The International, you’ve probably already seen that a good commentator can make a match much more exciting to watch, and help beginners understand what’s going on. But previous implementations of commentating systems have had the commentator’s voice stream sit outside the game. This means that it isn’t captured along with the game – and that means that if you weren’t there to watch the live game, you won’t hear the commentary when you watch the replay at a later date. We felt that should be fixed, so we built commentator support fully into the game itself, and bake it into the replay itself. So if you download one of The International matches, you can watch it as if it was a live game, with all the commentator’s camerawork and commentary intact. For matches commentated in multiple languages, you’ll find all the different languages there in the replay too. If you don’t have Dota 2 yet, and haven’t had a chance at seeing these features for yourself, you’re in luck: there are a ton of players out there streaming the game, so take a look and let us know what you think. A handy site we’ve been using ourselves is StreamDota2.com, which provides a nice set of streams to choose from. Share on Facebook Reddit this You have summoned Juggernaut September 30, 2011 - Dota Team Those folks who are already playing Dota 2 know that we update the game every Thursday. We thought we’d start posting here each time to highlight neat additions in the weekly update. Today’s update is undoubtedly the most important update we’ll ever ship, because it adds Juggernaut. It could contain absolutely nothing else, and it’d still be the greatest update, but it also contains various fixes and additional features. In particular, we’re still improving the matchmaking system, now that we’re getting a lot of great feedback (and data!) from all the matches being played. We’re also excited to see that ESWC has announced their support for Dota 2 in their upcoming tournament in October. We’ve really missed watching high level tournament play since The International, so we’re looking forward to it. I Said Good Day Sir! September 23, 2011 - IceFrog We’ve been a bit quiet lately. As always, we learn a lot whenever we put something out and get feedback from you all. Showing Dota 2 to the world at The International gave us a lot of feedback to chew through, and the many recent forum threads talking about the information leaking out of the beta has added to the pile. After a bunch of thinking, we’ve decided to change our plans a little. Our original plan was to spend the next year or so in beta, adding new features and slowly growing the number of heroes until we reached a level of parity with Dota 1, at which point we’d release Dota 2 to the world. But the feedback we’re seeing everywhere is that people just want to play it, even though there’s still a ton of heroes yet to be implemented. We’ve also seen that the folks who are already in the beta are chomping at the bit to show everyone else some of the fun games they’ve had. So we decided our original plan was dumb. Welcome to the new plan: We’re going to take the current version of Dota 2, which has The International set of heroes, and get it out there as fast as we can. We’ve still got some work to do in a couple of areas, so we’ll be keeping it invite-only for a (hopefully short) period of time. But there’ll be no restrictions on what players can do with it – they can release screenshots, make movies, shoutcast matches, write guides, publicly make fun of our HUD, or anything else their hearts desire. While they do that, we’ll be shipping regular updates with more heroes, new features we’ve been working on, and improvements on the existing content as we get more and more feedback. What does this mean for you? It means it’s even more important that you get on the listthat we’ll be inviting from. If you’re talented, you could take a shot at winning an invite in the GosuGamers competition or the Playdota contest. Once you’ve got your hands on the game, feel free to talk about it however you’d like – we’re excited to see what you’ll produce. In the meantime, we’re going to be ratcheting this blog up a little too, so you can expect some more regular posting from us. Share on Facebook Reddit this Highlights of The International August 26, 2011 - Dota Team Phew! With The International over, the Dota 2 away team is now recuperating back in Seattle, re-watching footage from the tournament and debating which bits should make the highlight reel. Three clips jump out as particularly amazing escapes: MiTH-TrlLK’s Morphling escape from the entire TyLoo gank squad MYM.Razer.DeMoN’s Beastmaster escape from EHOME MYM.Razer.DeMoN’s other escape as Dark Seer from Scythe- - - Although Tobi no doubt deserves a highlight reel of his own, these following clips are Tobi at his most entertaining: DOOM IS BACK, RUUUUN I DO NOT UNDERSTAND MY WORLD RIGHT NOW ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! BLACK HOOOLE BLACK HOOOOOOOLE (v1) BLACK HOOOLE BLACK HOOOOOOOLE (v2) BLACK HOOOLE BLACK HOOOOOOOLE (v3) BLACK HOOOLE BLACK HOOOOOOOLE (v4)- - - - - - - We’re not the only ones arguing about the highlights – GosuGamers also put up their own list of the Best Games of The International, so make sure you check that out too. Remember, if you missed seeing any of the matches, the VODs for all of them are still available over here, with commentary in English, German, Russian, and Chinese. We’re also incredibly humbled to hear that we’ve won the IGN People’s Choice Award. Thanks to everyone who voted for us! http://games.ign.com/articles/118/1189750p1.html Finally, if you missed your chance to sign up for the beta, fear not: Click here to get your name on the list. The excitement we carried home from Gamescom has got us all fired up to get the beta rolling as soon as possible. Share on Facebook Reddit this A Champion has been Crowned August 21, 2011 - Dota Team http://www.dota2.com/tournaments/international/ After five days of fierce competition team Na’Vi has won the million dollar grand prize, beating out EHOME in a best of five elimination series. Na’Vi started the final series out one game ahead due to its privileged position in the winner’s bracket, but EHOME quickly evened up the score by winning the first game. Na’Vi surged back to win the next two games in a row, securing their place in Dota 2 history and becoming the first Champions of the Dota 2 International Tournament. EHOME doesn’t leave empty handed though, they take home $250,000 for their second place finish. In all, $1,600,000 in prize money was won by eight teams over five days. Congratulations to all the winners. We’d like to thank XSplit, Limelite Networks, own3D.tv, and Level 3 Communications for their support during the tournament. Share on Facebook Reddit this What Does A Champion Truly Need? August 20, 2011 - Dota Team The big news for Saturday is from the winners bracket; Na`Vi has advanced to the finals by beating Scythe.SG in two straight games. This victory also spots Na`Vi a win in the final series so they are already up against their undecided foe one game to nil. In the losers bracket MYM was eliminated by EHOME. MYM is sent home with $80,000 and EHOME advances to Sunday’s playoff against Scythe.SG – the same team that sent them down to the loser bracket with a resounding defeat on Friday. Sunday will start with the best of three elimination series. The loser walks away with $150,000 and the winner will face Na`Vi in the championship match. In the final match the loser there earns a healthy $250,000 but it all pales in comparison to the ultimate champion and their $1,000,000 payday. Can Scythe.SG turn it around after Saturday’s crushing defeat by Na`Vi and rise up against the two opponents that have beaten them at every meeting? Can EHOME rise up out of the losers bracket and get revenge against Scythe.SG and then go on to defeat Na`Vi? Or will the powerhouse of the tournament Na`Vi keep rolling over every opponent in its path? The questions start getting answered Sunday morning in Germany at 10am CET. The final match to decide it all begins at 1pm local time in Germany or 7pm in China and Singapore, 2 pm in the Ukraine, or even 4am at Valve’s Head Quarters in Seattle. Watch them all live at Dota2.com. Category:Blog posts